The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is “The Woman Downstairs” by The Handsome Family, which someone recommended I
listen to but which I’m not sure is a keeper. I mean, I’ve already got Tom
Waits and Jim White:

The PSI Call Centerhas changed its name to PSI Contact Center to reflect “the
expansion of new technologies for customer relationships and contacts,”
according to company officials.

The new name, PSI Contact Center, “better reflects that more
and more of the programs PSI has been doing are based upon managing the total
customer contact process in a ‘multi-level access’ communication environment,”
company officials said.

In addition to managing inbound/outbound call programs, like
a good, self-respecting call center, the “contact center” manages e-mail
communications from customers and prospects. PSI is also working on integrating
the web and the call center to provide 2-way video interaction with customers
and prospects, instant expert assistance, concierge services, and chats.

Larry Evans, President, says that as of March 1, the company
had 130 call stations in service: “This expansion reflects the growing need of
our clients to track all aspects of the customer relationships. Also, our
expansion into help/desk and technical support services in all
communication/contact modes warranted creating a new identity.”

Okay, here’s the kind
of “scientific studies” we don’t need more of, it’s simply a scurrilous attack on the
greatest liquid on earth, brought to you by the kind of people who also told
you that saccharine could cause cancer and that sawdust marketed as oat bran
was good for you, they’re still laughing over that one:

Somebody who calls himself a “scientist” is running around
claiming that heart attacks might be a
risk for coffee drinkerswith a common genetic trait that makes
caffeine linger in their bodies, according to the Associated Press.

So-called “research,” no doubt funded by the International
Tea Lobby, on more than 4,000 people in Costa Rica claims to have found that “about
half had the trait and were considered ‘slow caffeine metabolizers.’ The other
half had the opposite trait, which caused their bodies to rapidly break down or
metabolize caffeine, and coffee-drinking in this group appeared to reduce heart
attack risks.”

Hey if you can’t handle the joe leave it alone, jack, show
us your back and lay off the black, know what I mean, go drink some Ovaltine.
Just because you can’t handle it doesn’t mean you’ve got yourself a license to diss it.

“Among slow-metabolizers, those who drank two or more cups
of coffee daily were at least 36 percent more likely to have a nonfatal heart
attack than those who drank little or no coffee,” the AP says, slowly falling
under the sway. “Even higher risks were found for younger slow metabolizers –
those under 50. They were up to four times more likely to have a heart attack
than slow metabolizers in their age group who drank little or no coffee.”

The findings, though preliminary, might explain why there
have been such mixed results in previous studies investigating caffeine’s
effects on the cardiovascular system, suggests University of Toronto researcher
Ahmed El-Sohemy, a study co-author and closet tea fanatic.

Verizon Business, a vendor of advanced
global communications and information technology products, has announced that
it has added Internet protocol
capability to its Verizon Web Center service, in a move to increase the
ability of the center to “communicate with customers using both traditional and
IP telephony,” company officials say.

Available this month, IP Web Center, a hosted contact center
product, will allow companies to start up or expand their customer communications
operations.

“Verizon Business is marrying its IP and contact center
services expertise to deliver one of the industry’s first end-to-end IP contact
center products,” said Nancy Gofus, vice president of product management,
Verizon Business, who pointed out the “capabilities and cost savings afforded
by IP Telephony.”

Verizon Web Center and Verizon Voice-over IP now share the
same network infrastructure and customer premises equipment, so Verizon
Business can activate IP telephony services, including IP Web Center, Hosted IP
Centrex, IP Integrated Access, IP Flexible T-1 and IP Trunking, at a given
company location.

IP Web Center is being marketed primarily to mid-sized
businesses who want to expand the functionality of their existing contact
centers, as well as those that want to build new contact centers.

Since IP Web Center is a hosted product that simply requires
a phone and a broadband connection, large companies can also use the service
for agents to make and receive calls virtually anywhere in the United States, reducing
the need to expand hard-wired contact center facilities.

According to Robin Goad, senior analyst at leading research
firm Datamonitor, companies are increasingly moving to the IP contact center,
taking advantage of an IP network environment to become more flexible and
realize infrastructure cost savings. And since IP encourages a virtually
distributed call center, that makes it ideal for using remote workers to
provide 24 x 7 global customer support.

Customer service agents can now personalize their voice mail
greetings, and can obtain more information about a customer’s history and can
supervise call transfers to speed customer support.

Customers themselves can now use IP technology, giving geographically
dispersed agents a “local presence” from anywhere.

Verizon Business’ newly expanded pricing options let
customers pay as they go for IP-enabled Web Center services, as businesses only
pay a monthly per agent price, plus call transport fees and associated IP phone
equipment costs. Naturally this is a great setup for companies that need to
increase agent levels during busy holiday times and then reduce them when
normal call levels resume.

…

Pegasus Solutions, Inc. announced today
that RAVE, its exclusive Rate and Availability
Engine, will be offered to hotels to help manage the alarmingly high volume
of shopping queries generated daily from travel agents, travel distributors and
travel Web sites.

RAVE, which was developed by Pegasus to enable its own CRSs
to cope with the increasing number of shopping inquiries, is being marketed as
a system to help hotels deal with the ever-increasing number of queries that
are “threatening to overwhelm hotel CRSs,” according to Pegasus officials.

“CRSs are being inundated with rate and availability
inquiries as consumers and travel agents shop for just the right room at just
the right price,” Bob Boles, Pegasus chief operating officer, noted. “With Next
Generation Seamless technology giving travel agents direct access to hotel CRSs
and online travel sites making it easy for consumers to comparison shop,
reservation systems that were designed for a look-to-book ratio of four queries
to one booking are now faced with ratios in the thousands-to-one range. And the
ratio is increasing.”